So this is what it feels like when a $30 million bag of fool’s gold falls on your head.

On the night when Paul Millsap, the man given an NBA fortune to teach the young Nuggets how to win, returned to the Denver lineup after missing 42 games with a wrist injury, the team not only suffered a loss ugly enough to leave a scar, it looked unworthy of the playoffs for the first time all season.

As the clock pushed past midnight into Wednesday morning, after Denver had blown a 19-point lead to the Los Angeles Clippers on its home floor and given away the final spot in the Western Conference playoffs simply because somebody named Boban Marjanovic asked, Nuggets veteran Will Barton stood in a locker room so quiet you could hear a heart break. He searched for words to explain the worst defeat of the year, with the same perplexed look of a man who pats every pocket twice, wondering how his cellphone went missing.

In the end, Barton had no answers, so he kept muttering the same two words: “Bad loss.”

Bad did not begin to describe it. This was the kind of loss that can stain a team’s psyche in a tight playoff race, with only 21 games remaining on the schedule. This is the kind of a loss that can get a coach fired.

I asked coach Michael Malone if this come-from-ahead, 122-120 defeat to the Clippers needed to sting, he replied: “It better. If this one doesn’t hurt … to be up 19 at home and to just give it away? Not give it away, because they played hard and earned that win. So we didn’t give it away, but we’ve got to close that game out. So if this one doesn’t sting, I don’t know what the heck is going to happen these last 21 games.”

The Nuggets aren’t going to mess with us again, are they? Find a way to miss the playoffs, the same as last year, and every year since 2013?

Blame Malone if you want. He deserves it. In a game with a tipoff so late that L.A. counterpart Doc Rivers groused “I had to take two naps,” Malone got outcoached, unable to put a halt to a 30-6 Clippers run that ran unchecked from the end of the third quarter right through the outset of the final period, no matter how many timeouts he burned. And how could Denver let the little-used Marjanovic, as big and mechanical as a construction crane, look like Wilt Chamberlain in his prime?

But in a league ruled by players, it was the $30 million annual salary the Nuggets gladly overpaid to Millsap that runs as the common thread through every conversation regarding this season. He was signed as a free agent to hasten the development of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Gary Harris. No matter how team brass soft-pedaled the idea, that $30 million was the scalper’s price the Nuggets were willing to shell out for a ticket to the NBA postseason. Millsap was hired to instill a playoff mind-set.

“It (means) taking every possession serious, every possession like it’s your last possession,” said Millsap, disappointed in the Nuggets’ glaring defensive lapses. “That’s what a playoff team does. They get stops when need it, and they don’t wait to try to do that.”

The pure bad luck of tearing a wrist ligament back in November is not Millsap’s fault. But the injury compressed the time frame in which the Nuggets could leverage their investment in a 33-year-old forward signed to a relatively short deal (two seasons plus a club option).

What’s more, Denver had played playoff-caliber basketball without Millsap, entering the showdown against the Clippers with a 33-27 record, only three games behind Minnesota for the third seed in the West.

After 100 days battling an injury that so tried his soul that Millsap admitted to shedding a tear on the day he could finally return to the active roster, he pulled off his warm-ups midway through the first period, then proceeded to score nine points and grab seven rebounds in 23 minutes against the Clippers. Not bad for shaking off the rust.

But for $30 million, shouldn’t the Nuggets have been able to buy one night of inspired basketball by a team excited to welcome Millsap back, instead of the same old litany of brain freezes that define this team at its absolute and far-too-frequent worst?

So how much can the Nuggets expect from Millsap going forward?

“Fit in before you try to stand out,” Malone said.

Sorry, man. For $30 million, fitting in will not cut it. For $30 million, Millsap needs to get a grip for the Nuggets, before they let it all slip away.

Did it take Chris Paul an extended period of time to figure out how to play alongside James Harden in Houston? And wasn’t Millsap’s signing by Denver lauded by the basketball cognoscenti because of his alleged ability to mesh seamlessly with Jokic rather than dominate the basketball?